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THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 



ADDRESS 



DAVID S. CODDINOTON, 



THE PRESIDENTIAL OEISIS, 



DtLlVEUEI) KEKDRE 



THE UNION WAR DEMOCRACY, 

AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YOliK, NOV. 1 1864. 



NEW YORK: 

WM. OLAND BOURNE, No, 12 CENTRE STREET. 

18 6 5. 

Edwaki) O. Jenkins, Printer, 20 Nortli William Street, New York. 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN, 



ADDRE SS 



DAVID S. CODDINGTON, 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CRISIS, 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



; THE UNION WAK DEMOCRACY, 

AT THE COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, NOV. 1, 18G4 



NEW YORK: 
WM. OLAND BOURNE, No. 12 CENTRE STREET. 

1865. 



,065- 



PUBLISIIEE'S NOTE. 



The brilliant and eloquent sijeech of David S. Coddington, Esq., 
made at the Convention of the War Democracy, in the City of New 
York, has been published in part in many of the journals. The great 
demand from all i)arts of the country for copies of this address, in a 
form for preservation, has induced the publisher to comply with the 
request. The speech has been carefully revised by the author expressly 
for this edition. A full report of the proceedings of the Convention, 
including also the speeches of R. B. Roosevelt, Esq. ; Hon. Hiram 
Walbridge ; Hon. James Worrall ; Major-Gen. John A. Dix ; Hon. 
Edwards Pierrepont ; Major-Gen. Daniel E. Sickles ; and Francis 
B. Cutting, Esq., is published in The Iron Platform, for December. 



Edward O. Jenkins, Printer, 20 North William Street, New York, 



By Transfer 

NOV 1 3 1922 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 



[Maj. -General Sickles having concluded his speech, after waiting for the 
subsidence of the tumultuous enthusiasm with which the patriotic and eloquent 
victim of the war was greeted,] 

Mr. CoDDiNGTON rosG and addressed the assembly. 

Fellow-Citizens — I feel the disadvantage of succeeding a 
hero. I bring witli me no deeds and no wounds to sanctify 
these verbal contributions to the exigency. We lose our 
Jiearts with those who lose their limbs for a cause that can- 
not be lost. 

In this ghastly crisis of our broken and bereaved America, 
a patient, suffering, and bewildered people are anxiously 
asking each other, in wliose ballot is wrapped the honor and 
safety of the nation, which ticket will admit us to the tlieatre 
of a restored and renovated commonwealth ? Does the angel 
of redemption beckon to us from the platform at Chicago or 
Baltimore ? almost the exact distance between self-destruc- 
tion and self-government. 

While the tempest is sweeping away old party obligations 
and raining down upon us new duties, shall we, as Demo- 
crats, drop helplessly into the flood, tied to the dead body 
of an organization whose anti-democratic conduct and anti- 
American spirit, would only entail upon us ridicule, de- 
gradation, and suicide ? Had the Democratic Party braced 
themselves up to the heroic height of the diificulty ; had 
they grafted the pluck of the ballot on the bravery of the 
bayonet, by insisting, without an "if" or a "but," upon 
the inviolability of the national unity ; had they joined 
issue with the administration upon mere questions of adminis- 



4r THE CEISIS AND THE MAN. 

tration, going before the countiy with different candidates, to 
vindicate tlie same national principles, asking a verdict of 
the people upon the propriety or impropriety of test oaths, 
upon the question of a sounder financial policy for the war, 
upon a more careful suspension of the habeas corpus, upon 
the best mode of reconstructing States and ameliorating acts 
of confiscation, so that the South might not pass from a 
slaughter-house to an almshouse, so that we might bind up 
the broken links of our common brotherhood with discrimi- 
nation as well as determination ; had they planted one foot 
on the crimes of the South and the other upon the faults of 
the administration, and said : " Here we stand, this is our 
platform, we will punish the one and avoid tlie other ;" such 
an opposition would have been seasonable, healthful, and per- 
haps successful. Party men and no party men, discontented 
Kepublicans and contented Democrats, all could have joined 
heartily, because safely, in so legitimate an antagonism. Dc 
not the virtues of the war and the vicissitudes of the war 
admonish us to remember that while both parties are falling 
and dying upon the same bloody field, struck down by the 
same dark hand, for the same bright cause, both parties 
should adjourn their less urgent differences and unite upon 
the one fearful overshadowing necessity, so that citizen and 
soldier, partisan and patriot, Kepublican and Democrat, hand 
in hand, thoughtfully as well as pugnaciously, we may snatch 
from this gory hurricane of righteous conflict the sweet 
sugar cane of perpetual peace ? 

We sympathize, naturally, with Abraham Lincoln. We 
appreciate the awful magnitude of his trials and temptations, 
his dangers and his duties. We thank God that a Scotch cap 
saved the American Cap of Liberty from sudden and sacrilegi- 
ous spoliation. We know how eagerly a jealous opposition have 
been watching him to make capital out of the blunders and 
losses of this war, in order to obtain that power which their own 
blunders lost. An executive without experience, without the 
larger range of statesmanship to grasp so comprehensive a 
calamity, is suddenly called upon to thrust out his village 
hands to catch a falling empire. 

I defy any man, even Napoleon himself, to pass instantane- 
ously from an Illinois lawyer to a Washington Commander- 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN". O 

in-Cliief without committing grave errors. Has his policy 
prolonged the war ? Which prolongs war most, the McClel- 
lan theory that returns to the eneni}'' the live ammunition 
of a working negro, or the Lincoln programme that keeps 
the African and hurls back only the avenging sweep of 
musket and mortar? Did he la}' his hand on the military 
elements ? Just in time for Presidential common sense to save 
Chickahominy strategy from losing Washington. Who 
doubts now that if McDowell had reported for duty on the 
Peninsula, Stonewall Jackson would not have thought it his 
duty to file up Pennsylvania avenue? Has the President 
sanctioned arbitrary arrests ? So did Washington and Jack- 
son ; so must all rulers who would save a State in danger. 
Where one innocent person has suffered, a hundred guilty 
ones have escaped. Does he favor acts of confiscation ? The 
South have confiscated every Northern thing, from a pin to a 
principle. Has he uttered the fearful word " Emancipation ?" 
It was a trumpet in the storm calling all hands on deck to 
save the ship. When the storm subsides the pen will shape 
into consistent proportions the security and humanity of the 
republic. There must always be a despotism in the Constitu- 
tion to meet the dangers of the Constitution. If the beautiful 
charter cannot defend itself, it is merely a passing remark, 
instead of a reliable instrument. Accustomed only to the 
practice of its peaceful provisions, we foi'get that it is not 
merely a temple in which to worship and administer, but an 
arsenal to load and fire. The war power of the Constitution 
— the right to suspend habeas corpus, to raise and support 
armies — is an awful recognition of the necessity for despotism 
in danger ; not a wanton and reckless employment of force, 
but an effective and peremptory use of power to meet sudden 
and perilous emergencies. I do not say that Mr. Lincoln 
has always wielded tliis power judiciously. Yet, if there is 
but one person in the crowd who will save my life from an 
assassin, I will not sta}- his arm to criticise his character. If 
we cannot endorse his errors we may at least adjourn their 
accountability. We look around in vain -at this election for 
any one else to strike such blows for the Union as Abraham 
Lincoln. The extremest war feeling is in power at tlie South, 
and the extremest war feeling must be in power at the North, 



6 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 

or there is no equality in the energy that wiekis our respective 
resources. Moderation and compromise are strength in peace ; 
they are weakness in war. The South mean every means of 
destruction ; and if we mean less we will gain less than we are 
fighting for. Mr, Lincoln is a long man, but he is the shortest 
cut to the enemy. If we mean war we must vote for him. 
We opposed Abraham Lincoln in 1800, because he was only 
the available candidate of what seemed then a still more un- 
available party ; but the flood of insurrection in 1864 has 
swept him u})on the Ararat of the argument, and the Chicago 
party have made his election the only test of true citizenship. 
You cannot inflict upon the Southern crime so severe a Pre- 
sidential punishment as the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. 
Whatever that guilty community have suff'ered, of desolation 
or slaughter, of weeping homes or broken hearts, have fallen 
upon them in streams of national retribution, poured from 
the chartered hand of Abraham Lincoln. AYhen you re-elect 
him you re-elect a restless chastening rod — you re-elect the 
unbroken and uncompromising march of the sovereign supre- 
macy. 

Few men could have carried this Government through 
such a conjuncture without committing errors enough to 
have insured the success of any opposition, candidly and 
patriotically marshalled. Unfortunately for us, unwisely for 
them, the Democratic leaders have so shaped the canvass that 
w^e dare not change our rulers for fear of changing our institu- 
tions. Vitiated by long habits of political intrigue, they judged 
the popular intelligence from their own degenerate stand- 
point. Because the people asked for reform, they thought 
they would bear revolution ; because some were willing to 
accept an improvement on Abraham Lincoln, they imagined 
it a good time to administer a platform dissolved in tins weak 
decoction of Yallandigham, Jeft'. Davis, and Benedict Arnold. 
The American people are a people of sentiment. They are 
gazing down into the profoundest depths of this question. As 
surely as the springs of the earth are gushing pure and sweet 
beneath the blood of battle, just so sure, under all the horrors 
of war, do we behold the refreshing streams of future order, 
stability, and peace. Tiie American people are also a business 
j^eople. Tiiey liave estimated the profits and losses of this 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 7 

war ; they have dropped in one scale the tears, the graves, 
the debts, the taxes, the crippled limbs, the ruined homes, the 
demoralized habits, and the depreciated constitutions, and in 
the other scale they have placed the unity, the progress, and 
the prosperity of America ; and they know how such profits 
outweigh all its losses. They see rising from the crimson mist 
a firmer, securer nationality, no longer at the mercy of the 
sophist or the conspirator, just as restricted, but more re- 
spected of all States and nations. They see, too, the States — 
always inviolate within their just sphere — no longer, with an 
arrogant intrusiveness, aspiring to unsettle the grander guard- 
ianship of the nation. If Abraham Lincoln is tlie tyrant and 
imbecile they call him, the Democratic Party had a great 
card in their hands, and the people will hold them respon- 
sible for trifling with the crisis and throwing away the game. 

If the President is weak, better a weak man with a strong 
cause than an indifferent man with no cause at all. Professing 
to be horrified at the usurpations of the administration, the 
Chicago party have left the people no alternative but to hold 
on to Mr. Lincoln, or give up the country. What kind of a 
country is it which elects the Chicago ticket? A majority 
of the people will then have decided that the principle of 
obedience to the will of the majority can no longer be main- 
tained; that it failed by peace in 1860; that it has failed 
by war in 1864. Elect that ticket, and you elect a laugh at 
our own arrogance, imbecility and cowardice ; you elect an 
acknowledgment that eiglit millions of people, armed with 
an impracticable sophistry are too much for twenty millions 
backed by the eternal truths of republican faith and national 
sovereignty. Oh ! but McClellan's letter is sound on the war. 
When was the Democratic machine ever stopped by a letter? 
Franklin Pierce's inaugural declared that the slavery question 
should never be revived during his administration, and in 
one year the land was wild with the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. James Buchanan made a similar declaration, 
and the blast from Kansas almost blew out the light of the 
republic. 

" Union," writes McClellan, " is the one condition of 
peace," ah ! but what Union ? The Union that appeases 
Southern hostilities by surrendering to Southern dogmas 



8 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 

about States doing as they like, or the Union that insists 
firmly on a firmer adlierence to national obligations. He 
dare not tell us which Union he means, and we dare not 
trust him without knowing. 

Besides, a scratch of the pen does not prove a man. A 
campaign letter is not a candidate's character. If you want 
to know McClellan, you must find out his liabits of thought 
and feeling. Wlio are his friends? "What are his associations 
and surroundings? They make the man, not electioneering 
words. The very virtues of the individual would be the vices 
of the administration. The men who made McClellan are heart 
and soul with the Soutli. If he is grateful, he will be true to 
them, and so, false to the country. Elect the Chicago ticket, 
and the Democratic Party will tell you that the people have 
decided in favor of negotiation. You know, and I know — 
and all the world knows — that success in negotiation depends 
on success in war. The South will say to your commissioners, 
"We went to war for our independence — you went to war to 
prevent it. You have been throwing shot and shell upon us 
for three years and a half without our crying enough. If 
your war is a failure ours is a success, and we demand the 
fruits of it — the acknowledgment of our independence." 
What other guaranties could you give them ? They have 
liad every thing but this acknowledgment ? The Republican 
Congress of 1861 unanimously guaranteed slavery in the 
States, and refused to disturb it in organizing new Territories. 
If the South wanted more at the commencement of the war, 
in God's name, what will they demand when you have pro- 
nounced that war a failure? 

McClellan could give them no more than Lincoln oflfered 
them tlirouo;h the first eighteen months of the conflict. He 
gave them back their negroes ; he guaranteed them every 
ridit under the Constitution, and what was the answer? More 
armies to invade us, more pirates to burn our helpless mer- 
chantmen, more importunities for foreign aid to co-operate 
against us, and if tiiese fail, the last ditch more welcome than 
the temple of Washington. General McClellan in repeating 
Mr. Lincoln's past is only walking through the canvass in 
that gentleman's old boots. If elected, backing his car on 
the worn-out rails of 18G1 and 18G2, to end where the colonies 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN". 9 

began, amid the confusion and anarchy of aboriginal con- 
flicts. 

John Yan Buren, in a speecli at Hudson, told the people 
that Mr. Lincoln with his emancipation policy, had per- 
A'erted the objects of the war. More than a year ago, on 
Madison Square, he declared slavery deserved its doom. 
Before the war that prophetic politician informed the North 
if secession took place it would be only a holiday task for us 
to go South and reannex them without slaver3\ Where are 
we to place a ticket with such somersault supporters? Here 
is one of the original fonnders of the later anti-slavery party 
going about the countiy denouncing his own offspring. Are 
not eighteen months long enough to play with war, fritter away 
our strength and jeopardise our existence? Depend upon it, 
a people who could fire on a President struck with the para- 
lysis of judicial and congressional restrictions, drop two houses 
of Congress, throw away a supreme judicial bench, turn their 
backs upon a popular vote ready to sweep them agaiu into 
power — a people who have emptied their hands of all these 
blessings that thej^ might tear up the foundations of American 
prosperity and float their ruins in the heart's blood of the 
North — such a people are not to be brought back by an ar- 
mistice, but on a stretcher. 

Never but once have the citizens of the North voted di- 
rectly upon the slavery question, and then they gave an over- 
whelming majority for Southern rights. In the contest of 
1852, the Fugitive Slave law and the Compromise of 1850, 
were almost the only questions before the people ; yet every 
Northern State, but two, voted solid for the South. That was 
the real test of Northern feeling for Southern slavery under 
the Constitution. In 185G the large vote of Fremont was 
neither for the woolly horse nor for the woolly head, but the 
recoil of a business people, from the breach of contract in the 
repeal of the Compromise of 1820. The election of Mr. Lin- 
coln was a judicial verdict against the corruption of politicians 
and the wiles of conspirators under the Buchanan administra- 
tion. The anti-slavery vote was not the increase of anti-slavery 
feeling; but the people driven into the anti-slavery party, 
as the only organized means of breaking down depraved 
statemansliip, corrupted by the slave power. France has 



10 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 

been called a inonarchj, modified by songs; Enssia a des- 
potism, tempered with assassination ; and is not the Ameri- 
can repul)lic a democracy, checked, not Chicagoed, by watch- 
ful minorities? The great distinction between despotism and 
democracy is, that in the first, the minority is dominant and 
stationary ; in the last it is patient, subordinate and fluctn- 
ating. The minority of to-day, fresh from communion with 
the people, may be tlie majority of to-morrow, administering 
their sym})athies in the government ; and the majority, re- 
lieved of the elevation and importance of official life, go back 
to renew and strengthen their affections with the people. 
Thus the system harmonizes, power rotates, and the republic 
is safe. Great benefits are sometimes in the minority, and 
great evils often in the majority, but with a little patience 
they inevitably change places. No man in this Union ever 
advocated a policy or a party that was not at sometime or 
another in power. And no man or party has a right to rebel 
against a principle whose alternating possibilities may en- 
sure their return to power. 

First it is Biddle's bank, then Benton's hard currencj"^, Mas- 
sachusetts' tariff" and South Carolina's free trade, anti-liquor, 
anti-rent and Know-Nothing, Wilmot proviso, and Dred Scott 
decision, each by turn swearing in their hobby ; and last to 
come — and yet to last always — Emancipation — poor, wild-ej'ed, 
closet-ridden fanaticism. Constitutionally, pertinaciously de- 
spised abolitionism ! Alternately the fanatic's dream and the 
politician's grave, the statesman's crime and the nation's goal. 
Humanity driven into a corner, reduced to a seventy years' 
whisper, started to its feet by the cannon of Davis, and floated 
by the blood of both North and South into the fireside posses- 
sion of every slaveholder or hater in this serf-banished land. 
i.i Negotiation means nothing now unless it means indepen- 
dence out of the Union, or insubordination in the Union. It 
means a foreign power built upon the ruins of our domestic 
hearth-stones or the whole republic, with the vital element of 
all republicanism gone — obedience to the will of the majority ; 
Union, with the principle of unity dissolved ; and when that 
dies, wlio will calm the jarring States? What will give 
us dignity and consideration abroad ? Where, then, is the 
great republic ? AVhat, then, do you mean by an American 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 11 

citizen ? Because one party favored the African, must all 
parties give up this beautiful Anglo-Saxon x\merica ? Be- 
cause the Constitution reserved to the States powers not 
necessary to the General Government, shall those powers which 
are necessar}', and which it did delegate to the General Govern- 
ment, be at the mercy of the sophistry or the iniquity of any 
State which imagines somebody at some time intends to 
injure them ? 

What do we mean by State sovereignt}' and State pride ? The 
States are spontaneous communities, born of the accidents of 
migration and settlement. The Union is the deliberate act of 
the best wisdom of all the States. Tiie national power is so 
much of State rights surrendered to ])rotectthe rest. And the 
States that strike at the nation strike at the rights of the States 
that make the nation. A citizen is born in South Carolina, 
raises cotton in Alabama, and dies in California. His cradle 
is rocked under one jurisdiction, his pocket filled or emptied 
by another, and his coffin lowered in a third ; but he is always 
in the Union — that most continuous, overshadowing and 
comprehensive home, into which reach his loftiest pride of 
empire, his deepest dreams of progress, his most varied and 
interlacing pursuits of business, ambition, or pleasure. Which 
State did Jeff. Davis risk his neck for ? Kentucky bore him, 
he studied treason all his life in Mississippi, commenced to 
practice it in Alabama, graduated a classic, full grown cul- 
prit in Virginia, and is fast advancing into those states of 
despondency and despair which are resuming their sove- 
reignty over him. 

How came the Democratic Party to father so distracting and 
decimating a heresy ? I confess I see nothing so attractive in 
the present position of that party to stand by it when Demo- 
cracy itself is perishing in their hands. Let us distinguish 
between the Democratic community and the Democratic 
organization. The Democratic community are sincere, patri- 
otic, and credulous. If they vote wrong, they mean right ; if 
they follow knaves and demagogues, they believe them cham- 
pions of the principles they love and cherish. How well the 
Democratic organization know how to play on these patriotic 
chords. By vigorous cries of " traitor," " turncoat," " go with 
your party," " he is a Black Republican," " stand by the Be- 



12 THE CRISIS AND THE MAjST. 

niocrac_y" — these arc tlie magic ])hrases upon which they pre- 
sume to whip into line all wlio M'ould rebel against fraud, 
treachery, imbecility, and disunion. We know where to 
find the peace party. They are o])en and honest. Strong 
advocates of weak governments, they hanker for ruins as 
Englishmen do for tainted clieese. Muddled with Calhoun 
metaphysics about State sovereignty, in the winter of our 
fortunes, they go South for their politics, as invalids go 
for their health. The larger and adroiter wing have uo 
theories and no ]irincii)les but for ])ower. They talk war for 
"Northern votes, that they may make peace for Southern votes. 
Lusting for Southern su|)])oi-t, thej' would legalize Southern 
treason and rob the North of the i-iorht to a stable (govern- 
ment, by turning this Tnion into the hall-door of a tenement 
house, where States may go in and out and track their dirt 
as they please, M'liile we intend that it shall be a hermetically 
sealed jar to preserve the fruits of our fathers from so destruc- 
tive an atmos})here. 

I charge the Democratic leaders with actino- in this crisis 
without dignity, consistency, common sense, or courage. With 
increasing through envy and disappointment the very evils 
they themselves helped to produce. I charge them with 
going to the Charleston Convention in 1860, and with their 
numerical minority as voters, and their numerical majority 
as delegates, attempting to force on that Convention a candi- 
date who, by his part in disturbing the Missouri Compromise, 
could not succeed at the Xorth, and because of his vote on 
the Lecom})ton bill would fail at the South. Refusing all 
compromise at that time, Avhen concession might have saved 
the l^arty and the country, and then denouncing the Republi- 
cans because they would not conciliate and compromise with 
violence and treason, when such concessions would have been 
degrading and useless. I charge the Democratic leaders and 
presses with j)retending to advocate the war, stamping the 
" Union at all hazards" on their banners, and then nominat- 
ing peace candidates who, after being smuggled through the 
ballot-boxes with the war-ciy, seat themselves down in Con- 
gress to vote the soldiers in rags and the countrv in ruins. I 
charge them with trying to wean the peoi)le from a just war, 
by artfully exaggerating its faults, underrating our resources. 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN, 13 

sneering at our victories, and sending their governors and 
ex-governors winning around the country to twaddle about 
the miseries and expenses of this conflict, as if all wars were 
not miserable and expensive, until bj hearty co-operation, 
shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, we bring them to a 
healtiiy conclusion. 1 charge this Jacobin junta with striving 
to drown the sound of their own blows upon the country in 
the cries of " liberty in danger," shrieking against arbitrary 
arrest, with the whole pack loose upon the land ; with attempt- 
ing to bring the military and civil power into collision, with 
denouncing taxation and high prices, as if high prices did not 
bring high w^ages, while the inexhaustible resources of 
mines and lands, and tarifl:' and trade would sink twice the 
debt to a mere bagatelle in a few years. I charge this 
beautiful crowd with essaying to degrade the Government 
and excite the prejudices of labor and races, by calling this 
a war for the neffro, when thev know that the white man's 
republic depends for its life upon the red blood that is spilled 
for it now. In vain do we look for any leading idea, any 
profound national sentiment or principle underlying this 
selfish opposition wrangle for power. 

ISTo foreign policy, save to snarl at the policy which keeps 
us from foreign war. ISTo domestic censure for those who 
would for ever uproot our domestic rights and interests. No 
theory of treatment in dealing with the deluded despoilers 
of our national inheritance, unless we give up all, to those who 
would break up all, that keeps us all,— a People — a Country — 
a Power. Nothing but an appeal to the lowest passions for the 
possession of tlie highest oflices. " Vote our ticket because 
we are opposed to the war. Rich man, war is expensive, it 
snatches away your wealth. Poor man, war is impoverishing, 
it takes away your work. Brave man, war is degrading, 
there is no glory in certain defeat." Such is the paralyzing 
programme a spirited and sagacious community are called 
upon to seat in the chair of George Washington. 

Where is that inspired, courageous old Democratic Party 
which Jefferson founded, Jackson immortalized and James 
Buchanan buried? Some years ago there could be seen 
stranded on the shores of Long Island Sound the shattered 
remnants of a once noble steamer. Its guards were down, 



14 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 

its rudder gone, its machinery broken and useless. Half 
blackened and consumed by storm and conflag-ration, its 
name still glared out in full capitals ; the bell which had so 
often rang the ])ublic to harbor and home still sounded mean- 
inglessly with every shifting gale. Just so stands the Demo- 
cratic Party. The same sound still calls to us ; but it is the 
toll above the wreck. The same grand old name still waves 
upon the campaign banners, waylaying us for our suffrages; 
but the vessel we trusted to carry us through every sea — once 
so powerful and popular — now drifts before the storm, a 
shrunken, helpless and snarling minority. Why is it that 
every east wind diizzles upon us a Democratic defeat ? Why 
is it that every northern blast whirls down upon ns a Ilepubli- 
can majority? Why is it that the West, to which we are told to 
look for clear skies and fair weather — the West is black with 
the popular refusal to restore this so-called Democracy ? 
Alas ! Uninterrupted prosperity has weaned patriotism and 
wisdom from politics. Little men have been permitted to 
triiie with great principles, and death or disgust swept all the 
Democratic giants from the helm. The Democratic Party 
came into life to give life to free institutions. Many heroes 
of the Revolution who fought for independence had no faith 
in popular government. After the formation of the Constitu- 
tion this distrust exhibited itself in the support of aristocratic 
privileges and monopolies. The Democratic Party was organ- 
ized to protect the constitution from the misconstruction of 
oligarchs, and the people from all oppressive and illiberal tend- 
encies, and not to play into the hands of despots and traitors. 
It began the world with the fears of Washington, the hatred of 
Hamilton, and the adoration of Jeiferson and Madison. With 
its infant hands it strangled the Colossus of the Pevolution, John 
Adams, and threw his party and his policy into the grave of 
the eighteenth century. Has it not advocated and adminis- 
tered every war since the revolution? Did it not banish the 
Indian and silence the nuUificr? Did it not chastise England, 
threaten France, and conquer Mexico? and must it go down 
under the red waves of a still more righteous conflict ? The 
old Democratic Party has added more territory to the Union 
than the peace of 1783. It purchased Louisiana, negotiated 
Florida, annexed Texas, and dropped all the gold of California 



THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 15 

into our pockets ; and shall such a counterfeit pinchbeck suc- 
cessor leave it hardly a State on which to lay its dying head? 
I stand by the Baltimore ticket, because there I find my 
country, and nowhere else in this election do I know where 
to look for it. It plays no tricks with the crisis. It is bold, open, 
manly and national. On that platform sits the courage of the 
Xorth, the spirit of the age, the genius of war and the safety 
of America. It calls guilt by its right name, and proposes to 
deal with it in the right way. It holds no parley with those who 
ask no quarter and mean no Union ; whom if you face you must 
fight, and if you treat with, you must yield. The Baltimore re- 
solutions represent the highest point to which courage and soul 
have raised endangered citizenship. The Chicago resolutions 
proclaim the most diminutive proportions to which political 
demoralization has shrunk American character. I see there 
only an English libel copied from the London Times^ and 
pronounced by a few shaking American politicians as their 
standard of political duty. They call the war a failure, then 
nominate a failure to prove it, then get that failure to write 
the platform a failure, and now it only wants one more fail- 
ure on the 8th of November to finish the concern. In- 
deed, has all this tramp, and shot and blood availed noth- 
ing? Speak, howling Jeft'., with' your fiilling spirits and your 
disbanding armies. Speak, ye thousand miles of sea-coast, 
with but one port to welcome the sneaking smuggler to your 
traitorous breast. Speak, Sherman, with your firm foot upon 
their guilty hearthstones, where you but stamp it and insur- 
rection, starved and ragged, flies wailing before you. Speak, 
pinching penury, useless energy. Speak, worthless currency, 
hopeless heresy, heartbroken community. Your falling tears, 
your running slaves, your dying brothers. Northern traitors 
stunned, foreign intervention dead, do you tell me Abra- 
ham Lincoln's gripe has no vigor in it? You have tried 
him in war, you have tried him in diplomacy, you have 
wrestled with him at the foot of everj'- throne in Europe. 
You have confronted him for thousands of miles along river, 
marsh and forest, where he has tracked you with the Indian's 
scent to save you from the Indian's destiny. You have sum- 
moned to your aid swamp fever, ambush, tomahawk and 
torpedo. You promised the world that you would strap 



16 THE CRISIS AND THE MAN. 

the North to your pole, driving the continent in double har- 
ness, and where are you now ? A nameless, penniless, shiv- 
ering outlaw ! shrinking from the charter signed " George 
"Washington," and dying by inches with the powder and ball 
of Abraham Lincoln. Is this a failure, oh, successful 
Yallandigham, with that hundred thousand adverse majority 
gazing down upon your sinking platform ? We who have 
gone back to the barbarism of blows to secure the civil- 
ization of votes — we who love the contention of thought 
better than the contention of arms — who prefer always to con- 
quer rather by convention than collision, we who have had no 
heart in mowing down any portion of the soul and strength 
of this nation, if that soul and that strength could be captured 
by a principle instead of an army — shall we not to-day, pro- 
fiting by the lessons of this war and this election, hold up 
that which best keeps us up ? The soldier from his farthest 
front of danger is watching us from our highest stand of civil 
duty. Can we drop the national fortunes into the slippery 
hands stretched forth to grasp them ? Would we not half- 
mast the flag on every battle-field, for the fruits of victory 
vanished, for the dead too uselessly slain, for the living too 
hopelessly dethroned, divided, debt-ridden and degraded? 
No ! we will treat our party as a loved mistress who has jilted 
us ; as a favorite gun that will not fire ; as a match too damp 
with Southern tears to light. We will huddle under this Lincoln 
shed until Democracy finds a better roof to shelter us from 
the tempest; until better times and better men shall give us 
back our party, purified by defeat, and our country, relieved 
of the sophist and the traitor, walks forth once more among 
the nations of the earth, a redeemed, invincible and united 
commonwealth. 



54 V 



7 



